Rhode Island and Oregon are two of the most reliable states for Democrats each election cycle. If anything, Rhode Island is even more a sure thing than Oregon. But the reality of public policy in the two states shows some pretty large differences. Admittedly, the following is anecdotal, but it also provides more evidence for my thoughts after a lifetime of following Oregon and the last 18 months in Rhode Island.

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I don’t know much specifically about Rhode Island politics, but I suspect a large part of the issue is that the Democratic Machine in either state is of vastly different ages. Oregon has only been a reliably blue state since the Clinton years or maybe a little earlier whereas Rhode Island has been a Democratic stronghold since FDR. This means there are more old labor Democrats who are homophobes and misogynists hold conservative positions on social issues.

Where is the moral or legal “right” to marry a person of the same gender found? It certainly has not been part of the human experience, of human history. Is it simply the personal happiness or fulfillment of individuals…?

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that some stuff is just gross and unnatural and downright unAmerican, and that among these are that queer “pursuit of happiness” nonsense.

Nice counterfactual screed he delivers there. Not only is same sex marriage a part of the human experience and human history, it is part of the history of the Catholic Church, as it performed same sex marriages in the early days of the church.

As a former three year RI resident, I was always amazed at the conservatism that ran throughout the Democratic party. With absolutely zero legislative party competition since the reapportionment revolution of the 1960s (when the Republican grasp on the malapportioned Senate came to a complete end) the party is deeply split between social conservatives and liberals and while I lived there the former held all of the major party offices. Friends tell me the leadership is slowly changing though and that’s nice to hear.

Yeah, in Massachusetts a lot of people who might be moderate Republicans elsewhere run for office as Democrats because it’s the only way to win. My state rep is an anti-choicer who’s always talking tax cuts. He’s a bit of a fossil, but my youngish ex-state senator was a relatively conservative law & order type too.

Hell, the two (then) state legislators who wrote the MA anti-abortion laws (long-since overturned by the state Supreme Court) were nominal Dems [Ray Flynn and some guy named Doyle.] Of course Ray has since converted to TeaHadi.
I am embarrassed for my tiny, corrupt, backward adopted state.
We are also the only state with Democratic majorities in the legislature to pass a voter ID law.

It’s the cost of national political lines translating poorly to the state level. Oregon is genuinely liberal, RI is not. But RI voters are still smart enough to recognize that voting for Republicans is a terrible idea. So conservative RI voters support conservative Democrats instead.

I might modify that to say that the Portland metro area and the Willamette Valley are liberal, and the rest of Oregon not so much. Then again, since the Willamette Valley is where most of Oregon’s population lives, maybe that’s a trivial point to make.

This is true for practically every state in the union. The major metropolitan areas are the liberal parts. Most people are either liberal through genuine belief or default to the culture of the place. However, the metropolitan areas contain the bulk of the population in most states, meaning that the state is geuinely liberal.

NYC and its suburbs are more liberal in social values than upstate New York, besides maybe Ithaca and the other upstate cities like Syracuse or Rochester. Same goes for Washington, California, etc.

Wait, people live in Oregon? I was under the impression they merely eked out a miserable and lightless existence, grubbing for roots in a perpetual leafy rainsodden gloom, emerging periodically to roar ‘BCS! BCS!’ and smite down the swollen arrogance of the SEC ? So my Californian friends all assure me, anyway.

Is it simply the personal happiness or fulfillment of individuals, the “right to do whatever I want to do?” If that’s the argument, it opens up all sorts of other social experiments for us, doesn’t it?

Right on. Where the fuck do people get the idea that they have a right to pursue happiness, anyway?

Massachusetts has the same issue. I’ve always believed that for both states the issue is Catholicism. Both states have large Irish and Italian catholic communities. These communities, even if their level of religiosity has declined over the years, have retained certain conservative cultural beliefs.

Massachusetts is more “progressive” than Rhode Island only because Cambridge and Western Mass and most of the wealthy suburbs elect social progressives while Rhode Island, because it is smaller, has fewer wealthy suburbs and no strong socially liberal constituency. Check out the last several Massachusetts speakers of the House: its a virtual parade of socially conservative catholic democrats.

The great thing about the marriage equality moment in Massachusetts was the way the Bishops got their asses handed to them, including by some relatively conservative legislators. Not only were they unable to get the Constitution amended to take away marriage rights, they also were unable to get changes to legislation exempting them from non-discrimination laws on adoption. Their petulant little fit over adoption, withdrawing from a contract with DSS over the unanimous disagreement with the Catholic Charities Board of Directors, was unable to sway the Commonwealth, despite Willard’s efforts on their behalf.

mrs efgoldman and I are MA born and raised, and lived there for the first 25 years we were married. We’re now going on 36 years. We’re still waiting for all those same sex weddings to destroy our marriage.
Still waiting.
Waiting………….

I wonder about how much they are retaining their conservative cultural beliefs. A friend of mine, a woman in her 40s and a life-long practicing Catholic, told me she just doesn’t get the Church’s stand against gays.

A lot of people are “Catholic” the same way they’re “Irish” or whatever; it’s just a cultural identifier that might come into play at Christmas Eve Mass or the St. Patrick’s Day parade, but it doesn’t really mean anything day to day. And most “Catholics” around here know about as much about what the Pope & the bishops are doing as they know about the Government of Ireland (i.e. fuck-all).

Catholic laypeople are increasingly divorced from their church leadership.

You’ve probably heard the term ‘cafeteria Catholic.’ There’s a lot of truth to it. Most Catholics use birth control. A majority are perfectly okay with gay people. A ton of them think it would be fine for women and men to hold equally authority in the church. They don’t believe that only a priest can intercede with God for them or that the protestants, jews, pagans, and muslims they live surrounded by are going to hell.

These are positions that will get you excommunicated if you try and hold them as a priest but are tolerated in the rank and file. To an extent. Pope Sidious and his fellow travelers are on record as wanting a smaller, purer church.

Yes, but in truth the “cafeteria Catholic” namecalling works both ways. Most anti-choice Catholics are also pro-death penalty, are perfectly willing to back any war an American President wants to wage regardless of whether it fits the Vatican’s definition of a “Just War” or not, and are angrily against the idea that everyone should have a living wage – all things that the Catholic Church supports as well.

Every American Catholic and every American priest in the Church is a “cafeteria Catholic” because the aggregate beliefs of the Catholic church do not map one-to-one to modern political ideology. And these days it’s pretty damn clear that in the USA at least political ideology trumps religious beliefs every single time.

I have a friend who is both a devote Roman Catholic, a weekly mass goer, and a very open and active in the LBGT community homosexual. The Roman Catholic Church can change their policy without any threat to membership probably.

I do want to point out that while Rhode Island has no same-sex marriage, it was the second state in the country to incorporate gender identity into its anti-discrimination law all the way back in 2001, while Massachusetts only pulled that off last year.

So why are these guys tax-exempt again?
Why are we putting old folks on catfood while the Catholic Church get a free ride while giving the finger to the concept of civil government and separation of church and state? Since when do pedaphiles in robes get to define civil rights?

Why are taxpayer dollars being given to an organization and the affiliates of an organization with a history of enabling and covering up the rape of children? In the county I live in, the local branch of Boys R Us administers welfare benefits.

I’m not sure that’s right. IIRC (and it’s been 20 years), a stake is a neighborhood, a ward a collection of stakes and a district a collection of stakes. I think district and diocese would be closer to the same.

laws against interracial marriage were struck down, on the basis of these clauses, for the very same reason that laws/amendments to state constitutions, disallowing same-sex marriages have been/will be struck down.

It’s perfect time to make some plans for the future and it’s time to be happy.
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